Next of Kin
by Ariel Tempest
Summary: Lucius Malfoy is jealous of the Weasleys. Why? There are seven reasons.


Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I am not related to her unless it's through some random ancestor about 50 generations back. Please don't sue.  
  
Warnings: Spoilers for book 4, mentioned original character.  
  
Author's Notes: I can't for the life of me remember what prompted the writing of this, other than the irony that the family concerned with bloodlines only had one child and the one unconcerned with them had seven, but the opening quote is my favorite set of lines in the entire book. So, you know, that justifies the rest of the fic. Really. Honestly.  
  
**Next of Kin**  
  
"Good lord, Arthur, what did you have to sell to get seats in the Top Box? Surely your house wouldn't have fetched this much?" I speak softly, low enough that Minister Fudge can't hear me. Not that he'd particularly care if he did, mind, you've never been high enough on the food chain to warrant his bowing and scraping.  
  
I turn to the rest of your party, ignoring Fudge as he goes off about my latest donation to charity, apparently ignoring you. In the corner of my eye, however, I watch you, watch your strained smile and the color that crawls up from your collar to offset that ridiculous red hair of yours. Your jealousy is written across your face like the adds on the billboard across the pitch, and it warms me to the very bottoms of my shoes. I'd hate to harbor so much jealousy toward you and not have it returned.  
  
Would it surprise you, to know that you have something I want? If someone were to tell you that the very sight of you tonight, standing there with your seven red-haired spawn was enough to drive me to distraction, would you stand there gaping like a stunned, freckled frog, trying to figure out what in the world _you_ could have that _I_, who am so much richer and more powerful than you will ever be, would possibly want?  
  
The answer, were I to be so foolish as to tell you the question, is standing around you, glaring at me to a one with those rich brown eyes. Children. Heirs. It is proof positive that there is no justice in the world that you, who couldn't afford to feed them all if they all lived at home, should have seven while Narcissa and I, who could buy your entire house and still have a fortune left over, have but one. The irony is made all the more cutting by your cavalier attitude toward bloodlines. You could lose two, three, four children and still a perfectly good chance of passing on your filthy, Muggle-loving blood, whereas if anything happens to Draco it will most likely be the last of the Malfoy line.  
  
You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd like the thought that there would be one less set of Pureboods to oppose your little Muggle integration scheme. You Weasleys breed well enough, perhaps you plan to marry one of your sons to the homely, irritating Mudblood who stands next to you, glaring at me for my scrutiny of her, and populating the world. Not if I can help it, Arthur.  
  
Draco will live to maturity if it kills me. He will live to succeed me, and Narcissa and I...we will keep trying. Trying for a second child to take some of the burden from Draco, trying to make a world where I don't have to push my son to the breaking point for the family honor. Although honestly, I doubt it will work. It took us long enough to get one child.  
  
You don't know that part, of course. No one does, except for a few very, _very_ loyal friends. You don't know that while you and that wife of yours were trying to out do rabbits with your reproduction, Narcissa and I were trying every spell, potion, and technique known to man to have a child. You don't the sheer frustration of downing a vile, piss tasting potion ninety eight percent guaranteed to result in fertility only to fall into that failing two percent. Repeatedly. Even if you did, you'd have stopped after one, content to have a child to hold and love and not giving a damn if they managed to sire grandchildren. You'd be blind to the danger.  
  
And there is danger, Arthur, even if I'm not going to mention it and you're too blind to see. There's danger in the way my son looks at Potter with something more than hatred, your eldest son with something more than contempt, the way he speaks of Professor Snape with something more than praise. It could be that he's merely curious, or bisexual, but where as you might trust in luck, and faith, and that rabbit warren you call a family, I'm more paranoid than all of that. As heartless as you and yours claim I am, I have no interest in breaking my son for my line. In fact, I doubt I could do it.  
  
Would it surprise you to know that I can be reasonable? That I can treat my heir as a human being instead of breeding stud? How would you react if one of your get showed up one morning with a boyfriend on his arm? Would you accept that there were other children to give you grandchildren? Or would you prove yourself more Malfoy than I and try to straighten them?  
  
I've seen what happens when you try to force people out of that particular mold, Arthur. You undoubtedly don't remember Julius. I'm not supposed to remember him, despite the fact that as my only cousin I spent most of my childhood following him around, trying to live up to his example. Actually, I think I've done a pretty good job, although I've long outgrown the childish exuberance he had as a young man, or perhaps I just passed it on to Draco. He's very much like his older cousin used to be, and I am like he would be, if he weren't sitting in a little room at St. Mungo's, staring blankly out the window more often than not, like everyone else there who received the Cruciatus curse one too many times. I know, here you thought I was just donating money to them to show off. I assure you, you're quite wrong. I give them money so that a too-slender blond man with no mind left that the rest of the family has not only disowned but erased from record and memory will be well cared for. I take potions nightly that would make a Nundu recoil so that even if Draco does come to me one day to tell me that he has no feelings for his fiancée, but rather for her handsome brother, I won't be tempted to have him join Julius.  
  
There's still a very good chance that my effort is in vain though, Arthur. There's a chance that my son will be the last of our line. That thought is foremost in my mind as we turn from you, your family, and Fudge, who has been babbling like the idiot he is this entire time. As we move away from you, blessedly our seats aren't next to yours, I glance quickly back over my shoulder.  
  
You won't live to see the end of the Malfoys, Arthur, nor will any of your children, even if I have to rise from my death bed, lock you all into that little tinder box you call a house and die listening to your screams.  
  
This, I promise you.  
  
-The End-


End file.
